Cleveland

Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.

Global education leader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today announced its new Reentry Prerelease Program designed specifically for correctional facility education centers. According to 2011 research from the Pew Center for the States, four in ten released prisoners will violate terms of probation or commit new crimes and be reincarcerated within three years. The Reentry Prerelease Program provides resources that cover not only academics but an array of social skills, from career guidance to problem solving to relationship management, to disrupt this cycle, with the ultimate goal of success upon reentry and reduced recidivism.

Less than a year after big-six publisher Penguin stopped making its ebooks and digital audiobooks available to libraries, the company is distributing them again through new partners. Penguin, which is already working with digital library distributor 3M Cloud Library to make some ebooks available to libraries, has now expanded a pilot program with 3M competitor Baker & Taylor Axis360. The Baker & Taylor partnership will include libraries in Los Angeles and Cleveland, the New York Times reports.

June is Audiobook Month, and leading digital distributor OverDrive announced today that it will update its popular audiobook download services to include new options for readers to instantly “See Book—Hear Book.”

In recent years, the cash-strapped public libraries in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, have resorted to such economy measures as staff layoffs, trim-backs of branch hours, vexingly higher fines, longer waits for books, and, of course, reductions in acquired titles. The state of Ohio hasn’t boomed, either. Maybe the economy will brighten now in the Cleveland area [...]